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Ptolemy II (Ptolemy Philadelphus)[tol´umE filudel´fus] Pronunciation Key, c.308–246 B.C., king of ancient Egypt (285–246 B.C.), of the Macedonian dynasty, son of Ptolemy I and Berenice (c.340–281 B.C.). He continued his father's efforts to make Alexandria the cultural center of the Greek world. He completed the Pharos and encouraged the translation of the Pentateuch into the Greek Septuagint. Finances were reformed, and a canal was built from the Nile to the Red Sea. He warred against Syria until he married his daughter Berenice to the Syrian Antiochus II. Ptolemy repudiated his wife ArsinoE to marry his sister, also named ArsinoE. Manetho, the Egyptian historian, compiled his history.
See P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (3 vol., 1972).
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